The Rise of Microsoft Visual Studio Code https://t.co/QHgnfOtCGu Go Vim!

The Rise of Microsoft Visual Studio Code https://t.co/QHgnfOtCGu

Go Vim!

— Joe Egan (@J0e3gan) December 10, 2018

from Twitter https://twitter.com/J0e3gan

SoapUI and JDBC Git-R-Done

http://stackoverflow.com/q/19264771/1810429

The free version of SoapUI continues to impress me for functional testing of WCF (or any other) services.

The power & elegance of the free version make it hard to believe that SoapUI Pro isn't worth every penny.

NetBeans 6.0 Beta 1 Ready

If you haven't read the news elsewhere already,... 😊 ...NetBeans 6.0 Beta 1 is ready.

I had occasional difficulties using pre-beta milestones on Vista over the last couple several months, tinkering after-hours; but I'm generally impressed with NetBeans 6.0.

Beta 1 should have fewer remaining wrinkles to iron – and no more JDK changes.  The final release should be dreamy.

Embrace GIMP

I recently found myself tinkering with graphics for various projects, and GIMP served me well as it has consistently for nearly 10 years, across numerous Windows and Linux versions.

Initial pass with GIMP's Crop Tool. Crop Tool options (left), cropping on the canvas (right). *

What surprises me is how many people remain unaware GIMP exists – and what a great tool it is. Of course, full-time graphics and photo professionals typically sidestep GIMP for Illustrator and Photoshop, just as I use Visual Studio instead of SharpDevelop for my .NET development; but for me, others whose work calls for occasional graphics hacking, and many hobbyists' needs, GIMP is a wonderful, free tool.

If you've never heard of it or used it, embrace GIMP!

* Screenshot courtesy of the GIMP team under a Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 3.0 Unported License.

Holy Fox!

Timing in life is bizarre. I haven't thought (never mind spoken) of FoxPro in years - until last week.

A conversation about naming controls made me think of FoxPro because a VFP 6 project happens to be the worst example of controls naming (try none) I've ever encountered. For months after said project, I had nightmares about Text31. ;)  (Its meaning is as obvious to you as it was to me I'm sure!)

This led me to briefly define VFP, or rather its forgotten role in Microsoft's portfolio. Wikipedia does a better job providing all the details; but I essentially explained that VFP's role is (was) to slowly bleed features into other Microsoft tools, look alive by absorbing occasional hand-me-downs, and retain its loyal developer base.

Well, the charade is finally over after all these years. As irony would have it, I learned Monday that Microsoft announced it will release VFP to CodePlex, making VFP 9 the last Microsoft release. Amen. Long may ye run, FoxPro!